The approaches described in this section could be pursued, but are not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Digital video recorders (DVRs) have become widely popular among consumers; quickly replacing VCRs as the consumers' main choice for viewing broadcast programs via cable, satellite, and terrestrial signals.
Like a VCR, a traditional DVR can be a single-purposed system dedicated to recording broadcast TV program content. A user tells the DVR what programs to record and the DVR records the programs on its local hard drive at prescribed times. During recording, the DVR changes the electrical signals of broadcast program content into digital information, such as MPEG data streams, and stores the digital information on the hard drive or directly stores pre-digitized TV signals on the hard drive.
At the playback stage, the user selects a program stored on the hard drive. The DVR retrieves the program from the hard drive and converts the program's digital information to analog or digital display signals. An attached TV set or monitor displays the program content of the signals on its screen. The majority of DVRs allow the user to perform operations such as play, fast forward, pause, and rewind on the program during playback.
However, DVRs, much like VCRs have been able to playback recorded programs with no other viewing options for the particular program. DVDs on the other hand allow the viewer to watch additional scenes or different angles of scenes. DVRs lack the ability to provide these types of features because they traditionally receive broadcast signals from terrestrial antennas, satellites, and cable. Those sources do not provide any type of ancillary program data in their signals.